rious chapter, "How a yong Gallant should behave himself in an Ordinarie"." One of the most expensive and elegant meetings of this kind in London is here described. It appears that the company dined so very late, as at half an hour after eleven in the morning; and that it was the fashion to ride to this polite symposium on a Spanish jennet, a servant running before with his master's cloke. After dinner, they went on horseback to the newest play. The same author, in his Belman's Night Walkes, a lively description of London, almost two centuries ago, gives the following instructions: "Haunt tavernes, there shalt thou find prodigalls: pay thy two-pence to a player in his gallerie, there shalt thou sit by an harlot. At ordinaries thou maist dine with silken fooles +3."

In the second Satire, he celebrates the wisdom and liberality of our ancestors, in erecting magnificent mansions for the accommodation of scholars, which yet at present have little more use than that of reproaching the rich with their comparative neglect of learning. The verses have much dignity, and are equal to the subject.

To what end did our lavish auncestours
Erect of old those statelie piles of ours?

For thread-bare clerks, and for the ragged Muse,
Whom better fit some cotes of sad secluse?

Blush, niggard Age, be asham'd to see

Those monuments of wiser auncestrie !

And ye, faire heapes, the Muses sacred shrines,
In spight of time, and enuious repines,
Stand still, and flourish till the world's last day,
Vpraiding it with former loue's" decay.
What needes me care for anie bookish skill,
To blot white paper with my restlesse quill:
To pore on painted leaues, or beate my braine
With far-fetch'd thought: or to consvme in uaine

In latter euen, or midst of winter nights,

Ill-smelling oyles, or some still-watching lights, &c.

He concludes his complaint of the general disregard of the literary profession, with a spirited paraphrase of that passage of Persius, in which the philosophy of the pro

41 Dekker's Guls Horne Book, P. 22. Ordinarie, or the Walkes of Powles; 1604.

There is an old quarto, The Meetings of Gallants at an
Jonson says of lieutenant Shift, Epigr. xii.

He steales to ordinaries, there he playes
At dice his borrowed money.............

And in Cynthia's Revells, 1600, “You must frequent ordinaries a month more, to initiate yourself." A. iii. S. i.

42 The title-page is O per se O, or A newe Cryer of Langthorne and Candle Light, &c. Lond. 1612. 4to. Bl. Lett. For J. Busbie. There is a later edition 1620, 4to.

43 Ch. ii. Again, in the same writer's Belman of London bringing to light the most notorious Villanies that are now practised in the Kingdom, signat. E. 3: "At the best ordinaries where your only gallants spend afternoones, &c." Edit. 1608, 4to. Bl. Lett. Printed at London for N. Butter. This is called a second edition. There was another, 1616, 4to. This piece is called, by a contemporary writer, the most witty, elegant, and eloquent display of the vices of London then extant. W. Fennor's Comptor's Commonwealth, 1617, 4to. p. 16.

44 Of learning.

found Arcesilaus, and of the ærumnosi Solones, is proved to be of so little use and estimation $5.

In the third, he laments the lucrative injustice of the law, while ingenuous science is without emolument or reward. The exordium is a fine improvement of his original.

Who doubts, the laws fell downe from Heauen's hight,

Like to some gliding starre in winter's night?
Themis, the scribe of god, did long agone
Engrave them deepe in during marble stone:
And cast them downe on this unruly clay,

That men might know to rule and to obey.

The interview between the anxious client and the rapacious lawyer is drawn with much humour; and shows the authoritative superiority, and the mean subordination, subsisting between the two characters, at that time.

The fourth displays the difficulties and discouragements of the physician. Here we learn, that the sick lady and the gouty peer were then topics of the ridicule of the satirist.

The sickly ladie, and the gowtie peere,

Still would I haunt, that loue their life so deere:
Where life is deere, who cares for coyned drosse ?
That spent is counted gaine, and spared losse.

He thus laughs at the quintessence of a sublimated mineral elixir.

Each powdred graine ransometh captive kings,
Purchaseth realmes, and life prolonged brings".

45 B. ii. 2. f. 28. In the last line of this Satire he says,

Let swinish Grill delight in dunghill clay.

Gryllus is one of Ulysses's companions transformed into a hog by Circe, who refuses to be restored to his human shape. But perhaps the allusion is immediately to Spenser. Fair. Qu. ii. 12. 81.

47 Pull them out of his purse.

45 Yet even.

48 B. ii. 3. f. 31.

cite a couplet from this Satire to explain it.

Genus and Species long since barfoote went
Upon their tentoes in wilde wonderment, &c.

This is an allusion to an old distich, made and often quoted in the age of scholastic science.

Dat Galenus opes, dat Justinianus honores,

Sed Genus et Species cogitur ire pedes.

That is, the study of medicine produces riches, and jurisprudence leads to stations and offices of honour: while the professor of logic is poor, and obliged to walk on foot.

49 B. ii. 4. f. 35.

Imperial oils, golden cordials, and universal panaceas, are of high antiquity: and perhaps the puffs of quackery were formerly more ostentatious than even at present, before the profession of medicine was freed from the operations of a spurious and superstitious alchymy, and when there were mystics in philosophy as well as in religion. Paracelsus was the father of empericism.

From the fifth we learn, that advertisements of a living wanted were affixed on one of the doors of Saint Paul's cathedral.

Sawst thou ere Siquis 50 patch'd on Paul's church dore,

To gaine some vacant vicarage before?

The sixth, one of the most perspicuous and easy, perhaps the most humorous, in the whole collection, and which I shall therefore give at length, exhibits the servile condition of a domestic preceptor in the family of an esquire. Several of the Satires of this second book, are intended to show the depressed state of modest and true genius, and the inattention of men of fortune to literary merit.

A gentle squire would gladly entertaine
Into his house some trencher-chapelaine";

Some willing man, that might instruct his sons,

And that would stand to good conditions.

First, that he lie vpon the truckle-bed,

While his young maister lieth o'er his head 52:
Second, that he do, upon no default,

Neuer presume to sit aboue the salt 53:

50 Siquis was the first word of advertisements, often published on the doors of Saint Paul's. Decker says, "The first time that you enter into Paules, pass thorough the body of the church like a porter; yet presvme not to fetch so much as one whole turne in the middle ile, nor to cast an eye vpon Siquis doore, pasted and plaistered vp with seruingmens supplications, &c." The Guls Horne Booke, 1609. p. 21. And in Wroth's Epigrams, 1620, Epigr. 93,

A mery Greeke set vp a Siquis late,
To signifie a stranger come to towne
Who could great noses, &c.

51 Or, a table-chaplain. In the same sense we have trencher-knight, in Love's Labour's Lost. 52 This indulgence allowed to the pupil, is the reverse of a rule anciently practised in our universities. In the statutes of Corpus Christi College at Oxford, given in 1516, the scholars are ordered to sleep respectively under the beds of the fellows, in a truckle-bed, or small bed shifted about upon wheels. "Sit unum [cubile] altius, et aliud humile et rotale, et in altiori cubet socius, in altero semper discipulus." Cap. xxxvii. Much the same injunction is ordered in the statutes of Magdalen College, Oxford, given 1459. "Sint duo lecti principales, et duo lecti rotales, trookyll beddys vulgariter nuncupati, &c." Cap. xlv. And in those of Trinity College, Oxford, given 1556, where troccle bed, the old spelling of the word truckle bed, ascertains the etymology from troclea, a wheel. Cap. xxvi. In an old comedy, The Return from Parnassus, acted at Cambridge in 1606, Amoretto says, I was in Cambridge, and lay in a trundle-bed under my tutor, &c." A. ii. Sc, vi.

"When

53 Towards the head of the table was placed a large and lofty piece of plate, the top of which, in a broad cavity, held the salt for the whole company. One of these stately saltcellars is still preserved, and in use, at Winchester College. With this idea, we must understand the following passage, of a table meanly decked, B. vi. i. f. 83:

Now shalt thou never see the salt beset
With a big-bellied gallon flagonet.

In Jonson's Cynthia's Revells, acted in 1600, it is said of an affected coxcomb, "His fashion is, not to take knowledge of him that is beneath him in clothes. He never drinkes below the sult." A. i. S. ii.

1

Third, that he neuer change his trencher twise;
Fourth, that he use all common courtesies:

Sit bare at meales, and one half rise and wait:
Last, that he never his yong maister beat;

But he must aske his mother to define

How manie jerks she would his breech should line.
All these observ'd, he could contented be,

To give five markes, and winter liverie 4.

From those who despised learning, he makes a transition to those who abused or degraded it by false pretences. Judicial astrology is the subject of the seventh Satire. He supposes that Astrology was the daughter of one of the Egyptian midwives, and that having been nursed by Superstition, she assumed the garb of Science.

That now, who pares his nailes, or libs his swine?

But he must first take covnsel of the signe

Again, of the believer in the stars, he says,

His feare or hope, for plentie or for lack,
Hangs all vpon his new-years's Almanack.
If chance once in the spring his head should ake,
It was fortold: "thus says mine Almanack.”

The numerous astrological tracts, particularly pieces called Prognostications, published in the reign of queen Elizabeth, are a proof how strongly the people were infatuated with this sort of divination. One of the most remarkable, was a treatise written in the year 1582, by Richard Harvey, brother to Gabriel Harvey, a learned astrologer of Cambridge, predicting the portentous conjunction of the primary planets, Saturn and Jupiter, which was to happen the next year. It had the immediate effect of throwing the whole kingdom into the most violent consternation. When the fears of the people were over, Nash published a droll account of their opinions and apprehensions while this formidable phenomenon was impending; and Elderton a ballad-maker, and Tarleton the comedian, joined in the laugh. This was the best way of confuting the impertinencies of the science of the stars. True knowledge must have been beginning to dawn, when these profound fooleries became the objects of wit and ridicule ".

The opening of the first Satire of the third book, which is a contrast of ancient parsimony with modern luxury, is so witty, so elegant, and so poetical an enlargement of a shining passage in Juvenal, that the reader will pardon another long quotation.

So Dekker, Guls Horne Booke, p. 26: "At your twelue penny ordinarie, you may giue any iustice of the peace, or young knight, if he sit but one degree towards the equinoctiall of the saltsellar, leaue to pay for the wine, &c." See more illustrations, in Reed's Old Plays, edit. 1780, vol. iii. 285. In Parrot's Springes for Woodcockes, 1613, a guest complains of the indignity of being degraded below the salt. Lib. ii. Epigr. 188;

64 B. ii. 6, f. 38.

And swears that he below the salt was sett.

55 See Nash's Apology of Peers Penniless, &c. Lond. 1593, 4to. f. 11.

Time was, and that was term'd the time of gold,
When world and time were young, that now are old:
When quiet Saturne sway'd the mace of lead,
And pride was yet unborne, and yet unbred.
Time was, that whiles the autumne-fall did last,
Our hungrie sires gap'd for the falling mast.
Could no unhusked akorne leaue the tree,
But there was challenge made whose it might be.
And if some nice and liquorous appetite

Desir'd more daintie dish of rare delite,
They scal'd the stored crab with clasped knee,
Till they had sated their delicious ee.

Or search'd the hopefull thicks of hedgy-rows,
For brierie berries, hawes, or sowrer sloes:
Or when they meant to fare the fin'st of all,
They lick'd oake-leaues besprint with hony-fall.
As for the thrise three-angled beech-nut shell,
Or chesnut's armed huske, and hid kernell,
Nor squire durst touch, the lawe would not afford,
Kept for the court, and for the king's owne board.
Their royall plate was clay, or wood, or stone,
The vulgar, saue his hand, else he had none.
Their onlie cellar was the neighbour brooke,
None did for better care, for better looke.
Was then no 'plaining of the brewer's scape",
Nor greedie vintner mix'd the strained grape.
The king's pavilion was the grassie green,
Vnder safe shelter of the shadie treen.-
But when, by Ceres' huswifrie and paine,
Men learn'd to burie the reuiuing graine,
And father Janus taught the new-found vine
Rise on the elme, with manie a friendly twine:
And base desire bade men to deluen lowe

For needlesse metalls, then gan mischief growe :
Then farewell, fayrest age! &c.—

He then, in the prosecution of a sort of poetical philosophy, which prefers civilized to savage life, wishes for the nakedness or the furs of our simple ancestors, in comparison of the fantastic fopperies of the exotic apparel of his own age.

They naked went, or clad in ruder hide,
Or homespun russet void of foraine pride.
But thou canst maske in garish gawderie,
To suite a fool's far-fetched liuerie.

A Frenche head joyn'd to necke Italian,

Thy thighs from Germanie, and breast from Spain:
Au Englishman in none, a foole in all,
Many in one, and one in seuerall "7.

One of the vanities of the age of Elizabeth was the erection of monuments, equally costly and cumbersome, charged with a waste of capricious decorations, and loaded with superfluous and disproportionate sculpture. They succeeded to the rich solemnity of the